Recombinant single-chain variable fragments (scFvs) of antibodies make it possible to localize antigenic and immunogenic determinants, identify protective epitopes and can be exploited for the design of improved diagnostic tests and vaccines. A neutralizing epitope, as well as other potential antigenic sites of a SAT2 foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) were identified using phage-displayed scF...

Immunological studies of rat skin collagen were carried out with a sensitive and quantitative radioimmunoassay. Hyperimmune rabbit antisera to rat skin collagen and isolated alpha2 chains were used. Iodine-labeled alpha chains and CNBr-produced peptides served as test antigens, and native collagen, alpha chains, and CNBr peptides were employed as inhibitors in the assay. The alpha1 and alpha2 c...

Six poliovirus-neutralizing Fabs were recovered from a combinatorial Fab phage display library constructed from bone marrow-derived lymphocytes of immunized chimpanzees. The chimeric chimpanzee-human full-length IgGs (hereinafter called monoclonal antibodies [MAbs]) were generated by combining a chimpanzee IgG light chain and a variable domain of heavy chain with a human constant Fc region. The...

The vector-borne bacterium Borrelia hermsii, a relapsing fever agent, switches gene expression of a surface protein between different antigenic variants, thereby causing sequential waves of immune escape within hosts and increasing the likelihood of transmission. Analogous programmed systems of antigenic variation occur in African trypanosomes and Plasmodium falciparum. In these examples, switc...

Pathogens have evolved diverse strategies to maximize their transmission fitness. Here we investigate these strategies for directly transmitted pathogens using mathematical models of disease pathogenesis and transmission, modeling fitness as a function of within- and between-host pathogen dynamics. The within-host model includes realistic constraints on pathogen replication via resource depleti...

A child was found to be excreting type 1 vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) with a 1.1% sequence drift from Sabin type 1 vaccine strain in the VP1 coding region 6 months after he was immunized with oral live polio vaccine. Seventeen type 1 poliovirus isolates were recovered from stools taken from this child during the following 4 months. Contrary to expectation, the child was not deficient in hu...

Bovine herpesviruses 1 (BoHV-1) and 5 (BoHV-5) share high genetic and antigenic similarities, but exhibit marked differences in tissue tropism and neurovirulence. The amino-terminal region of glycoprotein C (gC), which is markedly different in each of the viruses, is involved in virus binding to cellular receptors and in interactions with the immune system. This study investigated the genetic a...

VlsE, the variable surface antigen of Borrelia burgdorferi, contains a 26-amino-acid-long immunodominant invariable region, IR(6). In the present study, three overlapping 14-mer peptides reproducing the sequence of IR(6) were used as peptide-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay antigens to map this invariable region in infected monkeys, mice, and human Lyme disease patients. Antibodies of th...

Foot and mouth disease virus (FMDV), with its seven serotypes, is a highly contagious virus infecting mainly cloven-hoofed animals. The serotype Asia1 occurs mainly in Asian regions. An in-silico approach was taken to reveal the antigenic heterogeneities within the capsid protein VP1 of Asia1. A total of 47 VP1 sequences of Asia1 isolates from different countries of South Asian regions were sel...

The antigenic determinant on the Fc region of human IgG for two IgG rheumatoid factors (IgG-RF) from patients with rheumatoid arthritis were investigated in detail. The RF did not interact with IgG fragments that contained the C gamma 2 or C gamma 3 region alone, but required the presence of both regions for binding. The RF binding to solid-phase IgG were poorly inhibited by the IgG3 subclass a...